


bury my old soul (and dance on its grave)

by Contra



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Horror, M/M, Trying to actually wrap up the character arcs, Trying to find the end of the line, Trying to fix MCU time travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 10:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18589615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: Steve goes back to 1970 and realizes - for the first time in years he's back in a world that still has Bucky and Peggy in it.(Or: Steve gets stuck in the past and saves whatever he can.)





	bury my old soul (and dance on its grave)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I have ranted about the Endgame ending and the worst part is???? Putting Steve into the past means EVERYTHING POST TFA REGARDING HIM AND BUCKY IS KINDA RETCONNED... bc theres no way Steve is like "oh well I guess Bucky's being tortured for a few decades now my future self will take care of this."
> 
> Fair warning: This is kinda dark. Like I honestly wanted Endgame to actually address the underlying themes of like... guilt and redemption and personal responsibilty vs. circumstances and what it means to be a hero and stuff THAT THE MCU BUILT UP FOR YEARS but instead we got a kitschy happy ending for steve that turns into a nightmare once you think about it for more than three seconds (the bucky problem? the fact that it erases basically peggys entire life which she was known to be happy with?) so I was forced to write up my own. Its kinda AU/AE as I thought the whole "Pym works at the same base and so them time travelling without enough particles doesnt matter" was way too convenient and bad writing, so I kinda... started there
> 
> Another fair warning, this is operating on a mixture of "closed time loops" as opposed to time streams (bc time streams get reeeeeaaaallly wonky really fast) and the good old Douglas Adams principle of "the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end."
> 
> Last fair warning for the day, it's 1 AM and this isnt proofread.
> 
> Title is from [Bruce Springsteen - Long Time Coming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelwSWXPMrA), which is a very good song for multiple lines

 

 

Doctor Pym doesn’t work at Camp Lehigh. Their plan would have worked, except for that. Now though, it’s Tony, Steve and the Tesseract, and not enough Pym Particles for all of them. No way to restock.

“You leave,” Steve says, and that’s the end of the argument. He’s been out of time before. In a way, 1970 is closer to home than he’s been in a while.

Tony wants to object, but the truth is, it’s either Steve or the world and he’s got his little girl waiting decades down the line.

He leaves quietly and Steve remains, stranded again.

 

It’s better, though, this time.

A part of him wonders if Tony and the rest of the Avengers will make it. Another part of him wonders if he’ll ever find out, one way or another.

But the smallest part of him, the one that barely survived the whole way from Brooklyn, is wordlessly, euphorically grateful to be back in a world with Bucky and Peggy in it.

Bucky, Peggy and the chance to fix the world.

1970, with it’s fuck-ugly clothes and horrible coffee, looks very close to everything that Steve ever wanted.

Hope tastes foreign to him and sweet.

 

Obviously Howard figures it out. Tony mentioned his obsession only a million times, so when he’s shoved into a tiny office, a Walther pressing into the small of his back, Steve is at the breaking point between terrified and relieved. He is not surprised.

Howard’s missing Tony’s birth for this, Steve thinks. So that’s why Tony knew the date. How’s that for irony?

“Who are you?” Howard asks.

Steve gives back a smile he hasn’t felt on his lips in forever. “You really have to ask?”

Howard somehow punches and hugs him at the same time. But he believes him.

 

Howard asks two hundred questions in two minutes and Steve has no answers for any of them. What he can say is vague. He’s from the future. He’s from the past. He doesn’t know how any of this works either.

Bucky is alive.

He mentions Peggy and there’s something in Howard’s eyes, gentle and sympathetic, as he tells Steve about her husband. And Steve is happy for her. He really is.

“Are you staying?” Howard asks and Steve shrugs. He wants to. But he’s wanted before.

Finally, Howard tells him to not leave the office and goes to get Peggy.

 

At first, Steve isn’t sure if he wants her to see him. He doesn’t want to crash into her life as violently as he crashed out of it, eighty and twenty-five years ago, upending whatever balance she has created for herself in the years since.

But then she stands in the doorway, and she’s wearing the exact same lipstick and the exact same Chanel perfume and the exact same smile and he-

he’s not crashing into the ice.

He’s finally thawing.

“Steve,” she says, water spilling from his eyes like snowmelt, “Stevestevestevesteve” and they’re both here. And they’re both breathing.

 

It’s enough.

Her wedding ring is on her finger and she’s twenty-five years older than she used to be and decades younger than when he saw her last and he’s not sure what he is, not even sure if he’s human, but they’re _here_ , fuck the odds, Howard is here too, and Bucky is out there somewhere and now he’s got people who might save him and love is a torn-up rotten thing with scars, but like them all, it’s a survivor.

“What can we do?” Peggy asks when she can finally speak again, and Steve thinks, what can’t we?

 

That, it turns out, is the problem.

Nobody knows how time travel works, whether it’s alternate timelines or paradoxes or, as Howard points out, until today, even just a fucking possibility.

But Steve’s here and it is.

“You can’t make any major changes,” Howard says and it’s a punch in the gut. “Or tell us about stuff that hasn’t happened yet. We can’t risk the future unravelling around us. In quantum physics, there are some processes that change just because you observe them. The slightest action you take has the potential to actually destroy reality.”

And Steve answers, “But Bucky-”

 

 

 

“Could you risk the entire world for Bucky?” Howard interrupts.

And the truth is, Steve could. Hell, it’s not like he’s not been willing to do it before.

It must show on his face because there’s something like pity in Peggy’s and Howard’s eyes, something he hates them for, and he wants to scream - you’re missing the birth of your son for this, Howard, and he’ll never forgive you for it as long as he lives, they’ll make Bucky kill you and Maria, and all SHIELD will be known for in the future is the fact that it’s HYDRA-

 

“Could you risk everything Bucky ever wanted?” Peggy asks, and that inflates that train of thought like an old balloon.

Maybe none of them got any choice in this. That’s the tiny tipping point, Steve realizes, that turns his personal heaven into his personal hell.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” Peggy whispers, with a broken heart and the willingness to do whatever it takes to save humanity, and oh, doesn’t it hurt, to know this is who she is, always, “but if it’s possible, you need to go back as fast as you can.”

“I can’t,” Steve answers. “I-“

 

For a moment, they’re all silent

“But we’re here,” Steve tries to protest, “this must mean something. If no changes were allowed, we’d be dead by now.”

“Howard and I are good at secrets,” Peggy says. “Maybe we can keep this quiet. But what you said about Bucky, that’s bigger. If you stop him from doing something that has serious consequences, then you can’t just remove it and expect the world to be the same.”

“You don’t know what they’ll make him do,” Steve whispers.

Howard looks at him with calm, steady eyes. “I’m sure we’re going to find out.”

 

The truth: None of them have any choice in this. Maybe history is like a house of cards. Pull one out, it collapses. Or maybe it’s like a fabric, and Steve is a fraying gash.

It doesn’t matter, in the end.

He can’t save Bucky either way. If he does, he’ll change the fate of Hydra. Which might change the fate of the tesseract. Which might change the fate of the world.

Steve thinks about the future. It seems very, very far away.

The ugliest part of him wishes that was enough of a reason to let them die there.

 

But of course it’s not. He thinks about Bucky, a very long time ago, in a dirty flat in Brooklyn, telling him he’s going away for the war. Right and wrong exist. It’s really that easy.

Then he thinks about Tony, who’s being born today. Tony, who will carry his father’s opinion around like a nasty infection. Tony, who will risk his life to save the world.

Steve could change his childhood today.

But what if that means Tony will never become the man to fly that bomb out of New York?

And what would Tony chose if he knew?

 

The answer is really that easy and it’s written in the face of the man who will become Tony Stark’s greatest injury.

“It'll be alright,” Howard’s voice is quiet. He has no idea of knowing, of course. Hell, if he was right, Steve wouldn’t be here. “The things that are happening have already happened. We’ll do our best with the options we have that don’t risk the end of the universe. And for the rest of it, seems like despite that there is still stuff worth fighting for in your future.”

Steve wonders if he knows what he is forgiving.

 

“Okay, then I’ll leave,” he says. When they hug each other, they’re all crying.

They think he means the future, but that’s not a place he can go.

He goes to Coney Island instead, which is in a weird between-state, stuck between his childhood memories and the strange place that isn’t his present anymore.

It takes him hours to weigh all his options.

There is the obvious one: He could find Pym and try to get back, back into a future where Bucky might still be dead from the Snap. Maybe they’d even win against Thanos. Or lose once again.

 

Steve considers that for a long time. Getting Bucky back, broken Bucky, knowing there was a slight chance he could have stopped this. Howard at least. And the thing in reunified Berlin, where Bucky killed three children, which Bucky still thinks Steve doesn’t know.

Which Steve wouldn’t know, if he hadn’t pierced it together from Bucky’s nightmare screaming. He can’t let Bucky do this. Again.

 

Another possibility is getting Bucky here, before all this happens, after a lot of damage, yes, but nothing truly unforgivable yet, and save him forever. That might explode the universe. Might be worth it, too.

 

And then there’s the quiet nagging voice. It tells him to do a completely different thing. Steve turns it over and over in his head.

It comes down to this: Who is he?

Steve Rogers is a tiny, sick man who died in 1945. Captain America is a noble hero who he’s not sure ever actually existed.

But here in this year, when there’s a body that belongs to him still stuck in the ice of the Arctic, he allows himself to be honest. In the end, he is just a man who time got sick of. He’s redundant, even.

 

It’s barely even a plan, but Pym’s security in 1970 is so shitty he doesn’t really need one. He steals just enough particles for one trip for one man.

If he wasn’t so sure already, he’d tell himself he’s cementing his choices. Instead he buys a cheap notebook and writes them in ink.

Getting into the Soviet Union without detection is harder, but only just. There’s not many things dollars don’t buy, and a house in Siberia is certainly not one of them. It’s small and old and he loves it immediately.

Now comes the hard part: Biding his time.

 

The Winter Soldier finds him for the first time after three months. He doesn’t recognize him and feels threatened, but he’s been long enough out of conditioning to be… Steve wouldn’t call it intrigued. Confused, maybe.

The confusion is enough.

Steve kidnaps him and ties him up in the cellar, then makes him coffee the way Bucky Barnes liked, the few times they could afford it in New York. He tells him stories too, nothing too dangerous, just details about childhoods, about spring.

Letting him go in the morning feels like dying, like drowning.

But the Winter Soldier comes back.

 

It’s not a regular thing, exactly, but it’s small comforts. History might be an ugly fabric, and they might be the gashes, but Steve knows the pattern, too.

The Soviet Union will collapse in the 1990s. It won’t be more than a brief internal shift in Hydra hierarchies, but it will mean the Winter Soldier gets new handlers. Ones that don’t yet know him that well.

He counts down towards the fall of the Berlin Wall. He tells stories. He makes coffee, even though it’s occasionally very hard to find.

Sometimes, the Winter Soldier looks at him and knows him.

 

Though never enough.

But it’s trust that grows between them, that’s what their love is, too, always pushing through the cracks in the concrete. They are and remain Brooklyn boys.

Steve’s hair gets longer and darker in the Siberian winter.

“Why do you do this?” the Winter Soldier asks.

I know where the end of the line is, Steve doesn’t answer. And I’ll cross it for you. Even if no one can save us.

“Our consequences are fixed,” he answers, “but maybe not our actions.”

It doesn’t make sense, but what does? Love? Death? And yet he knows these abundantly.

 

He spends two decades planting flowers, making wishes, talking to almost nobody except the Winter Soldier, who he sees maybe once every few months and every third or fourth time is usually a new first time again.

It takes the Winter Soldier less and less to remember though. Not all of it, but parts.

Steve gets acquainted with his routine and his habits, his little flashes of happiness that he gets from seeing a flower, from being treated as a person, and with his fear and anger too.

All of that, he ingrains in himself as deep as he can.

 

They fight sometimes, too. One time, the Winter Soldier surprises him with a knife to his throat. Steve manages to get it off him, but in the struggle the ring finger of his left hand is sliced off.

It doesn’t grow back and Steve isn’t sure if it’s beyond the limits of the serum or if the serum itself is weakening.

He buries his finger in the yard and told himself he never intended to wear a wedding ring anyway. It’s March 1989.

Six months later, the Winter Soldier is in his back yard, scared and confused.

“Steve?” He asks.

 

Steve freezes. It’s going better than he’d thought. The handlers must have changed already and he quickly figures out from the way the Winter Soldier talks that they haven’t brainwashed him in a very long time.

He takes him in again, as always, makes coffee, tells stories.

They’re longer than usual this time.

“What if I could get you to a safe place?” He asks finally. His voice is shaking behind the casual tone.

“You can’t.” The man who used to be Bucky looks at him flatly as he speaks.

This must be it then, the end of the line.

 

The actual act of it is horrible. He ties Bucky up, wraps the quantum GPS around his hand. Bucky is fighting and thrashing, but Steve knows his style too well by now.

“Read them,” he instructs as ties a bag with the notebooks around Bucky’s chest. There are ten of them now, filled with words and sketches and explanations and apologies.

The ugliest part is taking the arm off. Bucky screams and cries and bleeds until he passes out. It starts sinking in then, what unforgivable truly means.

Bucky comes awake briefly once more and Steve kisses his sweaty forehead.

 

“It will be alright,” he whispers. Then he takes the tiny bottle of Pym particles and sends Bucky into a future where he might or might not be already dead.

He looks into the mirror one last time. Between his dark, long hair and his scruffy beard and the emptiness in his eyes, he thinks it might work. Plus, there’s a tracker in the arm, Bucky told him. Now he’ll only have to get the bloody thing on.

There’s a big butcher’s knife he bought solely for that purpose and just looking at it makes him feel dizzy and sick.

 

Sawing off his arm takes almost an hour, especially since the serum keeps trying to close the wounds. He’s on the verge of passing out multiple times.

But then, suddenly, it’s done and he feels nothing except hollow disbelief at the sight of his limb lying there. Putting on the mechanical arm is hard, too, but the serum heals his wounds around it in a way that looks close to the way it was attached to Bucky.

He can move it, too.

He steps outside, sets fire to his home, and then he’s on the run from Hydra once more.

 

They find him, of course.

That’s the only part he never forgets.

 

Howard Stark still dies in 1991.

 

Three children die in Berlin-Pankow two years later.

 

The Winter Soldier is not innocent. On the contrary, this was his own choice.

 

The Winter Soldier wakes up in 2023, scared and confused, in a world that Tony Stark saved, and comes face to face with himself.

 

They read the notebooks together.

 

“ _Dear Bucky_ ,” the first one starts.

“ _It’s not up to me to forgive things that apparently the universe needed to happen. I understand now that's why you never let me do it._

_I also understand that you won’t forgive me for this, because right now, going in, I know it’s unforgivable. I can’t even say that it’s something I want. Take this as proof, maybe, that you are not defined by actions you were forced into, when I was capable of committing them by choice._

_I have many explanations and you will find them in the following pages, but there is only one I truly need you to understand. Maybe this world has always been doomed by its own terror._

_But I couldn’t let it be you._

_All my love,_

_Steve_ ”


End file.
